Hf'T'-iJi 





Class 

Book 

Cqpyiiglit^N^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



UHCLE 

BILL'S LETTERS 

TO 

HIS HIECE 



UHCLE BILL'S 

LETTERS TO HIS 

J<iIECE 



RAT BROWH 



BRITTON PUBLISHING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



4>' 






Copyright, 1917, by 

Britton Publishing Company, Inc. 

Reprinted by courtesy of The Delineator 
All Rights Reserved 




SEP 20 1917 

©CU476136 




To those two dear people {and I must 
insist they ARE people), M.A. and 
G. F. B,y this little book is dedicated 
with the fondest regards. 
To the first I owe the amiable impulse which 
started me o^ on these rambles. 
To the second I wish to acknowledge my 
sense of obligation for the unswerving con- 
scientiousness with which she brought me 
up. 

The Author 





CONTENTS 


Page 
.... 8 


Frontispiece 


I. 


Uncle Bill gives some inside 
facts about moonlight 9 


II. 


Becomes violent over athletics 25 


III^ T'afinn.'s: RTinHHprv ..... 


. 43 


IV. 


■ ——"—-'- tf 

Takes a fling at heredity . . 


.. 55 


V. 


Touches up a few complexions 73 


VI. 


Uncle Bill loses his "goat". 


.. 93 








^'Margaret Dear*' 



Uncle Bills Letters 

To His Niece 

CHAPTER I 

In which Uncle Bill gives some 



inside facts about Moonlight 



M 



Y DEAR 
LITTLE niece: 



It pained me to observe that 
your last letter was decidedly in a minor 
key. You had intended, I gather, to go 
on a moonlight hike, the other boys and 
girls were ready and waiting, and the 
moon was better than good. Then, just 
at the last moment, mother took it into 
her head to say, ''No.'' 

Subsequently you spent a dolorous 
evening at home, and, relations between 
yourself and mother being strained, you 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



decided to fly for aid and comfort to me. 

I am fully aware that angels, with their 
proverbial caution, would hesitate to 
tread here, between a daughter of your 
high-strungness, and a mother with the 
capacity for firmness frequently evinced 
by yours. But I always was a foolhardy 
person, so, in spite of all misgivings, I'm 
going to harness up the Red Cross wagon, 
load it with lint for your bruised spirits, 
and balm for your aching heart, and come 
clattering on my way to your assistance. 
You're quite right; you need both a con- 
fidant and an able-bodied sympathizer, 
and I'm flattered plum pink that you 
selected me. 

It seems a shame — in fact, I am moved 
to strong language — it seems an unquali- 
fied shame, that when the others had wan- 
dered gaily out into the moonlight, you 
should be treed at home with nothing on 
your mind but your hair, and no more 

10 



INSIDE FACTS ABOUT MOONLIGHT 

exciting occupation than writing to an 
obsolete but affectionate uncle. 

Aren't grown-ups the limit? I lose 
patience with them myself, sometimes. 
Don't they show a remarkable fertility 
of invention in the number of things 
they're able to think up that one can't 
possibly do? It makes one respect the 
marvelous powers of the human mind. 

You did quite right to come to me. 
I'm a rebel myself. I've had the same 
feelings a great many times, and (if you'll 
whisper and won't tell a soul I told you) 
I'm beginning to be afraid that I'm 
incurable. 

I don't know if I ever mentioned it to 
you, but I got expelled from school when 
I was about your age. There's no use 
going into details, but it was practically 
because I said, ^'Yes" when I should have 
said, *'No;" I was in a hurry and there 
wasn't much time to think it over. It 

11 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



Improved 
the school 



wasn't vastly important, and it didn't do 
a great deal of harm at the time; very 
likely it improved the school some. 

The only reason that I bring it up now 
is this: that every now and then, as the 
years go by, I am brought face to face 
with some quick, snap-shot decision, and 
when I look it square in the eye, I usually 
recognize that it's the same old question 
that has gone and painted itself up, and 
put on false whiskers or some other 
preposterous disguise, and 
stolen out surreptitiously, 
thinking that I wouldn't recog- 
nize it, to propound itself to me 
again. And you bet 
your life I say, "No.'' 
I don't want any 
more truck with it. 
If you're willing 
to let this confession form a basis of 
mutual understanding, let's sit down 

12 





INSIDE FACTS ABOUT MOONLIGHT 

confidentially and investigate the cause 
of your perturbation. 

It began, I believe, in the special 
quality of moonlight in which you were 
invited to participate by your loving 
friends, but from which, for family and 
totally unreasonable reasons, you were 
violently debarred. Your difficulty seems 
to date back to the moon. At any rate, 
we are safe to begin there. Because if 
there hadn't been any moon there 
wouldn't have been any moonlight — and 
hence no excursion proposed; and hence, 
probably, a lot of other things. In fact, 
it would be difficult to figure out what 
would occur if there wasn't any moon. 

Let's waive that as a side-issue, and 
proceed to indict the moon as the real 
culprit in this affair, and let's, you and I, 
conduct an impartial investigation with 
the idea in mind that somewhere along 
the line we may run across the reason 

13 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



mother cherished for being so gun-shy 
about the moon. 

There's no reason why we shouldn't 
be cozily informal about it, the moon is a 
somewhat intimate subject to discuss 
with a lady of eighteen. Still, knowing 
me as you do, you won't misunderstand 
anything I say, will you, Margaret 
dear^ 

Let's just pretend that you and I are 
sitting out on the front steps, and a 
perfectly good moon is blandly gleaming 
across the ocean, and just touching the 
perfect profile of your cheek. (At this 
point, if you will go back some five lines 
and reread, I'd have you note the classy 
way I turned the line on *^Mar- 




thereby surreptitiously 
introducing a tender 
touch, without being 
in any way liable for 
damages.) 



Let's indict 
the moon 




That, my dear child, 
was due to the effect of the 
moonlight on the peachy bloom 
of your complexion. And if it 
would affect me, your old uncle, 
that way, to what flights of fancy do you A talent 
suppose it would prompt some slim and ff^^^^^^' 
elegant young gentleman, with a de- 
collete sport collar, and a special talent 
for looking noble in the moonlight ? (You 
don't have to answer — this is no oral 
examination.) Just make your own de- 
ductions and save them for future refer- 
ence. 

Abandoning that line of inquiry for 
the moment — here we are, you and I, 
snugly settled down for a chat. I be- 
lieve I am holding your hand. I think I 
became possessed of it some moments 
ago, while your attention was temporarily 
elsewhere. I could hardly say now how 
I did get it; certainly I was a perfect 

15 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



gentleman about it, and there's nothing 
you need blush or bridle over. My 
impression is now that I asked you about 
a certain ring you either were or were not 
wearing — it doesn't in the least matter 
which — but my inquiry was of so absorb- 
ing a nature, and implied such an over- 
whelming interest in your welfare, that it 
completely diverted your attention, and 
you quite forgot I hadn't given you back 
your hand. 

At any rate, here we are, and in about 
four minutes more, it is my settled con- 
viction, that I shall lean my head on your 
shoulder, or put it down in your lap (con- 
fident that the moon will by that time 
have made such action on my part seem 
perfectly reasonable to you). 

I am using a great many capital "I's'' 
in this prospectus; perhaps I should use 
the editorial "'we" — I speak for my sex. 

We are a loyal bunch — us males — and 

16 



INSIDE FACTS ABOUT MOONLIGHT 



we understand each other perfectly. I 
am speaking in entire confidence that, 
even if I'm not on the job myself, some 
ardent co-worker will have taken up the 
task with enthusiasm. 

Therefore, having arranged ourselves 
to my complete satisfaction — and as you 
have as yet said nothing, I am assum- 
ing that the understanding is mutual and 
complete — we take up the matter of the 
moon, its advantages and disadvantages 
as considered from the standpoint of the 
*'Young Person.'* 

Astronomically speaking, the moon is 
238,850 miles from the earth. It 
has little or no atmos- 
phere, and is supposed to 
be devoid of animal or 



vege- 
table 
life. 




Paris lit out with 
Helen 



UNCLE BILL 3 LETTERS 




Take a 
little time 
off, to 
pick out 
the right 
one. 



One side of the moon never sees the light 
of day. And yet, in spite of all these 
seeming handicaps, the moon, my dear 
niece, is quite capable of raising merry 
Hades with^otherwise staid and respon- 
sible men and maids. 

And she has been doing that same for 
about a quarter of every calendar month, 
since Helen lit out with Paris, thereby 
completely breaking up 
the best society of Troy, 
and leaving Menelaus 
with a ten years* scrap 
on his hands. At varying 
intervals she has indis- 
creetly interfered in the 
affairs of the younger 
representatives of mul- 
titudes of our first families. 

There's no use going into sickening 
details, but there were Heloise and 
Abelard for two; and when you remember 

18 




INSIDE FACTS ABOUT MOONLIGHT 

what the moon did to Juliet and her 
devoted Romeo, it makes you wonder how 
she ever dares to look you in the face. 

There was a sad ease, if you like. I 
haven't read the play for years, but as I 
remember, they only took treatment for 
about three evenings, and then it was 
daggers, poison and small swords! And 
nothing left of the prescription but a tomb 
for two! 

There wasn't anybody in this party you 
didnt go to named Romeo^ was there? 
Perhaps mother 

BUT, to come back to the moon. 
While it's admitted that she's been act- 
ing in a perfectly scandalous manner 
for eons of time, there's this cheering 
thought to comfort us on our lonely way. 
We have every reason to believe that the 
moon is going to keep right on in the 
same deplorable line of conduct all dur- 
ing your lifetime and mine. So why 

19 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



repine? What if you have overlooked 
a bet or two in the past ? There's plenty 
of chance in the future, dear child, and 
at eighteen there's plenty of future. So 
don't rush to the conculsion that mother 
has wrought an irreparable injury in 
your young life. 

ONLY, instead of plunging abruptly 
into the moonlight with the first bunch 
of bipeds that straggle past your roost, 
take a little daylight time off to pick 
out the right one to sit up with. Other- 
wise you stand a chance of waking up 
some day to discover that you have 
married a noodle merely because he lit 
up well; and it may further disturb you 
to find out, in addition, that he gets fuller 
than the moon, and oftener. 

It fills me with contrition to thus sell 
out my sex, but believe me, child, I know. 
It is a matter on which "woman's intui- 
tion" cannot be materially depended to 

20 




inform her. And it's discover- 
ies of this sort, made too late 
in Hf e, which have a tendency 
to make much of our married 
life a failure, and to fill some of 
our most improving literature 
with laments over the laxness of our 
divorce laws. 

You must adnnt, yourself, that it's 
disconcerting to any lady, no matter how 
romantic, to face every morning over the 
coffee-cups, a party picked hastily by 
moonlight, with the realization steadily 
settling over her that she was actually in 
love all the time with the moon. I 
think this must be what is meant when 
people use the term * ^misplaced affec- 
tion.'' 

At any rate, my dear niece, I adjure 
you to pick your lad carefully and test 
him scientifically, paying due attention 
to his works, without too much regard 



A noodle who 
lit up t»eH 



21 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



for his surface finish. As you grow older, 
and acquire a more permanent knowledge 
of the rules of the road, you will learn 
that many a "'refined'' looking car is 
merely "'dipped/' not painted; and of 
course, under those circumstances, it 
doesn't wear so well. If you have given 
yourself sufficient time to form your 
determination, selected your quarry with 
care, run him down and got him 
"cinched," — then it becomes purely your 
own affair whether you prefer him plus 
moonlight, or minus. 

I don't suppose that what I have 
written you here is exactly what mother 
had in mind when she told you at the last 
minute you couldn't go off with the other 
boys and girls for a moonlight hike. 
Mother is not as garrulous as I am, and 
even if she had consented to give her 
reasons, would doubtless have phrased 
them in more scholarly language. Mother 

22 



INSIDE FACTS ABOUT MOONLIGHT 

undoubtedly feds a sense of responsibil- 
ity for her nearly grown-up little daugh- 
ter, that compels her to choose her words 
carefully in discussing matters of grave 
import. 

Being merely your uncle, I am natural- 
ly not so chary of my chatter. To me 
you are nothing but an interesting and 
ofttimes impudent young animal of the 
opposite sex, although I am desperately 
fond of you. Knowing that you have 
always been willing to make due allow- 
ances for this, IVe always said to you 
frankly whatever happened to be on my 
idle mind. 

In this matter of moonlight, I am as 
serious as a Presbyterian synod, and as 
friendly as a wet dog. If the sincerity of 
my feelings is not at once apparent, it^s 
my fault, and I apologize. 

I started out, fully intending to sympa- 
thize with you, and conscious even of a 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



slight impulse to aid you in browbeating 
your oppressors; but I have talked my- 
self into rather a confused state of mind. 
I find myself wondering more and more 
about mother. Do you suppose, by any 
possibility, that your parent was right? 

Devotedly, 

TOUR UNCLE 




u 




CHAPTER II 

Touching on Athletics 

MY DEAR 
MARGARET: 

Your last letter was a long way 
back, and I didn't answer it, did I ? So 
you didn't write any more, and our fine 
young correspondence, that was going to 
be such a grand affair, blew up with a 
loud report. 

You ought not to treat me that way, 
child; you're acting as if I were a regular 
correspondent. I ain't; I'm an uncle, 

25 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 




You ought 
not to keep 
books. 



and entitled to a lot of special 
privileges. The mere fact that 
I don't answer all your letters 
as fast as you send them 
ought to cut no ice with an 
energetic young person like 
yourself. You should realize 
that your letters constitute a dis- 
tinct refining influence in my life, and 
your sense of duty should make you 
conscientious about your work. 

And above all, you ought not to keep 
books on me, and reduce the whole thing 
to the mere terms of a give-and-take 
proposition, a vulgar swap. That's no 
kind of way to act with an uncle that 
thinks as much of you as this one does. 

You may, perhaps, dimly remember 
that you and I had a long talk about 
athletics before you started away to 
school. I presume I'm safe in taking it 
for granted that you did not listen at the 

S6 



TOUCHING ON ATHLETICS 



time, and that, even if you had, by now 
you would have forgotten every word I 
said; therefore, I'm going to recapitulate. 
(Fine word, that; sounds something like 
a sort of secondary surrender.) 

But that's not the way I'm using it. 

Not a bit. You may have beaten me 
so far up-to-date, but, like John Paul 
Jones, ^'I have not yet begun to j&ght." 

I told you frankly that I did not care 
a *'hoot" how you stood in your studies as 
long as you graduated from college. And 
I remember at the time, you seemed to 
find that an incendiary remark. I don't 
believe that any university has, as yet, 
mastered the full job of completely pre- 
paring youth for life. If you graduate, 
and the faculty are not distinctly sore at 
you, and are willing to entrust you with a 
piece of parchment, stating in ingeniously 
fiUed-in Latin phrasing that you have 
been an associate of theirs for a given 

27 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



length of time without opprobrium, I am 
not sure that that isn^t about all that 
anybody can get out of a college. You 
don't carry half the things away from 
school that the faculty entrust to your 
keeping. 

I was, personally, a high line on integral 
and differential calculus. Even my pro- 
fessors marveled at my proficiency. I 
used, indeed, to marvel at it myself. I 
haven't thought of either of those divert- 
ing exercises since I said good-by to the 
faculty, and right at this minute on the 
clock I don't know what either of the 
terms means. I have a dim recollection 
that the cosine was a troublesome char- 
acter which ought to have been left in 
jail, but beyond that my mind's a blank. 

And yet a hard-working, underpaid 
man, with a high order of mentality, 
spent a couple of years banging a perfect 
comprehension of the details through my 

28 



TOUCHING ON ATHLETICS 



skull, and at the time we conversed on 
the subject almost as equals. 

What I want you to get out of your 
four years of college is a sure-enough 
diploma, with no disability directly at- 
tached to it. Don't get a diploma that's 
held up on you for a year, and don't get 
suspended for getting unduly gay at 
unseasonable times. Get an 
honest, cheap, hard-work- 
ing diploma, that states 
that you were there for the 
full four years, and that no- 
body on the faculty has 
anything against you. 

But go at once — mind 
you, you promised me four 
months ago to go at once! 
— and I knew perfectly well 
from the smug innocence of your last 
letter, that like the young man in the 
Bible, you said, "I go, sir," and went not. 

29 




/ have not yet 

begun to 

fight 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 




Even my professors marveled 



Now it is imperative. Go at once to the 
physical instructor, introduce yourself, 
get a physical examination, find out what 
is the matter with you, and proceed for 
three years and eight months to repair 
those defects. 

And this doesn't mean that I desire you 
to be captain of the basket-ball team, or 
win any cups at tennis, or give fancy 
exhibitions at pole-vaulting or standing 

SO 



TOUCHING ON ATHLETICS 



on your head; nor does it mean that you 
must be a muscle-dancer. 

What I want you to be four years from 
the day you entered that school is a 
young woman with perfect, radiant 
health, who knows how to take care of 
her own body without drugs, and who's 
laid in a stock of ammunition in the way 
of health that would be good for ten 
years without any further additions, but 
who's got the habit of making regular 
daily replenishments so firmly fixed in 
her system that she'll carry it to her 
grave. 

I want every muscle in its place, of the 
proper size, and doing its perfect human 
function. 

It makes no difference 
what you contemplate 
doing after leaving 
school. Broadly speak- 
ing, there are four 

31 




UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



avenues of endeavor. You may marry, 
you may go to work for somebody, you 
may employ others, or you may loaf. 

Nothing on earth can start a woman 
better toward happy wifehood than 
health and the knowledge of how to keep 
welL Nothing is a better asset for the 
employer than the even-tempered equa- 
bility that comes of perfect strength and 
health. Nothing will advance an em- 
ployee faster than the good-humor and 
capacity for work that derives from per- 
fect health. And if you are going to loaf 
your life away, the Lord knows you'll 
have a better time if you're well. 

I'm making this just as reasonable as I 
know how. I don't want you to accuse 
me of being an old fuss-budget, and I 
don't in the least want at any time to 
prevent your trying your own experi- 
ments with life. Every man has a right 
to his own gamble, and so has every girl. 

32 



TOUCHING ON ATHLETICS 



There would be scant fun living if you 
couldn't take a chance for yourself some- 
times. 

But one thing that I don't want you to 
do is to come back at me with a line of 
reasonable excuses that you think you're 
going to get away with. Don't tell me 
that you're playing so much tennis that 
you really haven't much time left, and 
in addition to the tennis you are taking 
frequent sea baths. 

I know all about that tennis, and I 
know that today is apt to be too hot, and 
that you can't play tomorrow because it 
rains, and that the day after it will be too 
cold; but a little superficial smartness at 
the game will lead you to nurse the illu- 
sion that you're one of the hardest 
worked tennis 



players of your 
acquaintance. 
And don't 




The hardest worked 
tennis player 




That isnt the kind of 
muscle I mean 



give me any of the sea-bath 
stuff! It's fine to take all the 
baths you can get away with, 
but don't brag about it. No 
person has a right to be inor- 
dinately vain about bathing, 
and nobody has a right to make it an 
excuse for not doing something else. It's 
a simple Christian duty, like saying your 
prayers. 

I imagine all these warnings are un- 
necessary. I think you are much too 
astute a child to attempt to bedevil me 
with the obvious. What I suspect you 
are going to do is to write me a long, 
appealing epistle, full of filial devotion, 
in which I will find tucked away a hint 
or two that expenses have been heavy; 
that it would seem to be straining gen- 
erosity to mention the vast amount of 
expensive apparatus necessary; that you 
are perfectly willing to do it, if I insist. 

S4 



TOUCHING ON ATHLETICS 



I can see it gradually getting itself to- 
gether and making a fine letter. I al- 
most believe it myself, now I think of it. 
I fancy I would believe it if it weren't 
for one thing. 

I was a ; judge a few years ago for an 
athletic contest of young males. A prize 
was offered to the boy who built up the 
best trained muscles within a given time. 
It resembled a mail-order affair, and 
judgment was rendered on a series of 
photographs. One boy stood so far ahead 
that the judges became curious to know 
what special apparatus had wrought this 
miracle. They got the boy to come into 
the office and explain. When it was put 
up to him he said, ^'I used me mudder's 
flat-irons." 

When I went to school as a kid, that 
boy would never have been allowed to get 
by with any such stuff as that. As soon 
as he mentioned the flat-irons the judges 

85 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



would have seen at a glance that he was 
no athlete. 

The fashion of that day prescribed 
that if one desired to be well and strong, 
the first inevitable step was to go to a 
specified place, and there purchase a 
certain kind of sweater, and a particular 
type of shoes, together with various other 
expensive and ornamental addenda sup- 
posed to be particularly imbued with 
health-giving qualities. 

Now, when one of the physical culture 
maestros lays out a curriculum for the 
benefit of the multi-millionaire, he very 
seldom prescribes a costume. Sometimes 
he gently refers to clothes in an absent- 
minded, off-hand way. "You may do 
this,'' says he, "if you choose, in your 
pajamas, or you may do it in '* 

Perhaps he goes no further into the 
intricacies of your wardrobe, but you 
gather the impression that, so far as he is 

36 



TOUCHING ON ATHLETICS 



concerned, you may do it in anything you 
please that you don't mind getting down 
on the floor with, and straining at the 
seams. All that he is concerned in is 
that the thing be done. What is over or 
under your muscles while 
you do it is of less concern 
to him than it is to you — 
particularly if it is a hard- 
wood floor. 

He doesn't bother with 
paraphernalia. Being an 
eminent business gentle- 
man, he charges for the 
brains he puts into the 
undertaking, and the cost 
of advertising. After the 
money has been painlessly extracted, the The grace 

n ' ^ n . . 1 • IP ofahtppo 

proncient one usually contents himseli 
with showing you photographs indicating 
how you would look uncomfortably 
draped in various impossible attitudes 

37 




UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



over a kitchen chair. An ambitious 
anemic is apt to be surprised at the dis- 
covery of how much one can sprain one's 
back without incurring a dollar's worth 
of expense. 

A 220-pound policeman whom I was 
once privileged to call my friend, said 
that walking was the finest exercise in 
the world for a human being. He didn't 
mean going shopping, or stepping over to 
a neighbor's, or strolling with a young 
man. He meant walking for the sake 
of the health it gave you, leaning the 
body until its weight helped to carry you 
forward, and making the arms and 
shoulders do their fair share of work. 

I'll buy you a gymnasium full of the 
highest-price apparatus that the sport- 
ing-goods people can deliver if you think 
you need it and if it's the only induce- 
ment that will start you to work. But 
don't try to prove anything by it to me. 

38 



TOUCHING ON ATHLETICS 



I want you to chum with the physical 
instructor, who, I'll bet right now, is a 
corking soul and a better comrade, if 
you get to know her, than any other 
member of the faculty. Get to be fast 
friends with her as soon as you can. Try 
right off to have her look you over and 
comb you down. Let her frankly tell 
you that you stand round like a lobster 
and walk like a slouch, that you don't 
even know how to dance, that your spine 
is crooked, and your head isn't put on 
right, and that you use those dainty feet 
of yours with the grace of a hippopot- 
amus. Don't go after flattery, get next 
to the real things as she sees them, and 
then fix them to suit yourself and her. 

Understand, dear, that this is your 
dodderingly affectionate uncle who is 
talking, and that I probably am plumb 
besotted in my admiration for you just 
as you stand; and I quite realize that this 

39 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



may constitute an ambitious attempt to 
"paint the lily/' but I have just got the 
confounded ambition to try to egg you 
on into becoming the best girl that ever 
stepped in her State. 

And if you pile up, for four years on 
end, the surplus of health and high spirits 
I want you to gain, just as like as not you 
will find that, inadvertently, you are 
studying a heap harder than you ever 
intended to. You probably can't help 
it, but it won't hurt you any. 

It's the old-fashioned idea of the "good 
student" that I'm trying to save you 
from; the kind that used to devote the 
summer following graduation to nervous 
prostration, alternated with erudite 
attempts to hand the higher criticism 
to mother. 

I want you to be real girl when you 
come out. You don't have to be all 
bumpy and deformed, or look like an 

40 



TOUCHING ON ATHLETICS 



overworked circus lady. That isn't the 
kind of muscle I mean* Good muscles 
are something like a Christian spirit, in 
that ^^By their work ye shall know 
them.'' In fact, it's vastly preferable 
that you should be the only person that 
knows that you've got them — unless the 
necessity arises to demonstrate. But 
you want to know right where they are, 
and just about what they'll do. 

The possession of that kind of health 
and muscle makes anyone, man or woman, 
feel in all the contacts of life as if he were 
fighting down-hill, with the sun in the 
other fellow's eyes. It gives one a lovely 
sense of superiority. 

Your next letter to me should be brief, 
abject, and conciliatory. The main news 
that I wish to gather from it is that the 
physical instructor, after a great deal of 
persuasion, has agreed to take your case 
in hand, although she has misgivings that 

41 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



she'll not be able to make much out of 
you, and that the salient points that 
cropped out in your lengthy interview 
were that your biceps ain't mates, and 
that your feet don't track. 

Affectionately, 

YOUR UNCLE 



42 




So 
secretly 

Chapter III ^«^ 

Uncle Bill Taboos Snobbery 

MY DEAR 
niece: 

Some days back there came 
trailing along a letter from you. I 
don't know where it is now — I haven't 
for the life of me been able to find it. 
It's a way I have with some of my 
most cherished possessions: I'm so 
afraid of being deprived of them that I 
put them away in a place so secretly safe 
that no one can find them, not even me! 
I seem dimly to remember that in your 

43 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



letter you used, with considerable glib- 
ness, what sounded to me like a cant 
phrase. It might be a bit of local slang, 
for all I know, but at any rate it seemed 
to convey a delicate innuendo against a 
certain very stout and honest little 
motor-car. 

You wrote in friendly mood, as if you 
were sure of my perfect sympathy and 
understanding; you seemed to assume 
that the phrase expressed the common 
opinion of all normal, right-thinking 
people. I gathered the feeling that you 
and I both belonged to a vast crowd of 
successful, prosperous individuals with a 
special place of our own in society, who 
viewed this car whenever we happened 
to see it, from an angle of about forty- 
five degrees looking downward. There 
was to me about our position and our 
sentiments, as you translated them, a 
smear of self-sufficiency and a touch of 

44 



TABOOS SNOBBERY 



condescension which inclined me to 
revolt. 

Frankly, my dear little girl, I'm against 
our attitude as you indicate it. 

If you have got far enough along in 
that college course of yours to have 
struck the department of vital statistics, 
one statistic that might have stuck with 
profit is this: A few years back, the per- 
centage of insanity was higher among 
women and girls who 
lived on outlying farms 
than among any other 
division of femininity. 
This was attributed to 
the hard, unlovely, 
monotonous life lived in 
lonely places, without 
sufficient variety of warm, human in- Withaspecid 

, *' , jtlace xn sooiety 

terest. Durmg your summer vacations 
you have been in the country enough to 
know what a farm looks like, and you 

45 




UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 




U you re far 
enough along 



must have some knowledge of how the 
work is carried on. On the ordinary 
farm, work lasts from dawn till 
dark. There's usually one pair 
of work horses which cost a 
great deal of money. When the 
day is over these horses are so tired that 
it's bad business to work them any 
further, and the best-dispositioned farmer 
in the world is so sleepy at supper that 
he can hardly keep his chin off his chest. 

If the farm Kes a few miles out from 
the village, the mother and daughters 
stand an excellent chance of not seeing 
the village from early spring until snow 
flies. Father hasn't the requisite leisure 
at his command during the open season 
to drive the necessary miles. The horses 
haven't the excess strength, and even if 
they had, father wouldn't dare trust 
"Bub'' with the valuable team. 
So they all stay on the farm. 
46 



TABOOS SNOBBERY 



No visitors come, and they haven't 
much to think about, except the grueling 
hard work. 

That's the old condition that used to 
promote so much insanity in the country. 

But within a few years a new factor 
has made itself felt. The cheap little 
car came along, costing no more than a 
pair of good horses, sometimes not as 
much; costing practically nothing when 
you're not using it. When supper is 
over, no matter how tired father is, it is a 
relaxation for him to drive the car in the 
cool of the evening. He washes up with 
alacrity, shaves himself — and this one 
thing alone would be almost 
worth the price of the car to the 
womenfolk with lonely, affec- 
tionate souls; for father, shaved, 
has a kind, sympathetic, 
bronzed face, calculated to 
attract both admiration and af- 




47 



Can't keep his chin 
off his chest 



UNCLE bill's letters 



fection; whereas, a Sunday-shaving fa« 
ther goes the rest of the week, lost in an 
impenetrable thicket of bristly stubble, 
from whose inaccessible depths it seems 
well-nigh impossible to disentangle him. 

Also, father, shaved, inadvertently 
adopts a more gala set of manners. He 
gets into his best coat, cranks the little 
car, and in the long summer twilight 
away go the whole family merrily down 
the road to the village. 

They are proud of father, proud of the 
shiny little car, and proud of themselves. 

At the end of the road are the drug- 
store and the movies and the circulating 
library, old friends to see and new ones to 
make. It only takes a comparatively 
few minutes for the stout little car to 
whisk them over the six or seven miles, 
and after a jolly evening they can be back 
on the farm in plenty of time for abun- 
dant sleep. 

48 



TABOOS SNOBBERY 



It is a fine breather, and brings them 
in touch with lots of the good things of 
life that otherwise they would miss 
entirely. 

So you see the little car comes mighty 
close to being a big benefactor the whole 
length and breadth of the land. You 
have got a fine warm heart, and a good 
clear head, and I dare you now to sneer 
at it. 

Then there are the young folks, boys 
and girls just getting married, with not 
much money. They can't afford to keep 
horses, but they can squeeze out the price 
of a cheap stock car — always, of course, 
figuring that they want it worse than they 
want some other things. This means 
that the week-ends find them far out in 
the green meadows, along the river or 
under the trees, filling up with fresh air, 
instead of sweltering in town in dingy 
lodgings. 

49 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 




Dazzling 

complexions 

disguised 

by white veils 



The little car means life and adventure 
and wonderland to them, and the babies, 
when they come, are going to be just that 
much better and stronger because of the 
little car. When you look at it 
from this angle, doesn't the little 
car begin to sound like a prac- 
tical aid to civilization? 

I don't wish to arrogate super- 
natural powers, and the Lord 
knows I'd make no money as a 
mind-reader, but I know something about 
how any human mind works at your age. 
So I feel free to assert that if you accepted 
an invitation from some nice young fellow 
of your acquaintance to go buggy -riding 
in his little tin flivver, and a great big 
fourteen-thousand-dollar imported car 
came honking arrogantly up behind you, 
after you had been crowded into the 
ditch to let it go by, you would feel prob- 
ably smaller, and certainly cheaper, for 

50 



TABOOS SNOBBERY 



the incident. And no matter how up- 
standing and plucky a young fellow he 
was, his mood would be very apt to reflect 
yours. It's quite likely that there 
wouldn't be as much gay conversation 
between yourself and him for the next 
few minutes; it would be rather remark- 
able if you exchanged confidences on 
your mutual emotions. 

You would doubtless have thought 
that those purple-faced, plump, success- 
ful-looking men in the fur coats, and the 
ladies with the dazzling complexions, 
disguised by white veils, were looking 
down with contemptuous amusement on 
you and your young man and your pitiful 
little imitation of luxury. If they all 
smiled as they went by, you misunder- 
stood them. They were not smiling at 
what you thought they were. 

They lit up involuntarily at the sight 
of you, simply because you were you^ and 

51 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 




$26,000 
m year 
merely for 
'* three 
squares'* 



looked SO nice, and because 
your young man was so de- 
voted and proud, and be- 
cause you were having such 
a perfectly charming time 
out in the open. 

It's a hundred to one 
that they were all envying you. You 
know that those ultra-perfect com- 
plexions, that stack up so well under 
a white veil, are not always on the level, 
and very likely every lady in the tonneau 
was thinking that she would give her 
false hair to know what kind of toilet 
cream you used. And the chances are 
that the fat business gentlemen were 
figuring out just how much they would 
give to throw off a few years and a few 
pounds, and go back to the condition of 
living where it didn't cost a man twenty- 
five thousand dollars a year merely for 
**three squares and a place to sleep,'' and 



52 



TABOOS SNOBBERY 



where there was sometimes a chance of 
having as much innocent fun as that with 
a girl Hke you, and being perfectly sure 
in their own minds that the girl liked it as 
much as they did. This, instead of 
jolting along the road at fifty miles an 
hour, in a fever to get from the indigestion 
of the last road-house to the apoplexy of 
the next. 

I'm not sure that the little car isn't a 
weaver of romance. 

The reason that I have flown into such 
a passion of oratory over your probably 
thoughtless remark, is this: If the 
viewpoint it indicates happens to crys- 
tallize in your mind, and others akin to 
it begin to group about it, you, my dear, 
will be in the way of 
evoluting into a very suc- 
cessful little snob; and, 
personally, I don't aim 
to help bring you up 

S3 




Train you to reverenU 
ly raise your hat 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 




A Sunday- 
shaving 
father 



into any such condition of servitude. 

No, I revere the little car so much for 
the happiness that it has brought into 
lives which might have developed into 
hard angles, that if you were a boy I'd be 
inclined to train you to reverently raise 
your hat every time you passed a cheap 
car. 

But, as you are a girl, wearing, as you 
do, no honest hat, but a fluff of confec- 
tionery firmly skewered to your thought- 
less head, I will, instead, emit this threat : 

Moderate as I am, and dispassionate 
as I have attempted to be in this dis- 
sertation — 

If I ever hear of your treating the little 
stock car in the future with anything but 
respect, I'll take the flat side of a skillet 
and beat your bonnet off your benighted 
head! 

With love and fondest admiration, 

YOUR DEVOTED UNCLE 
54 




Chapter IV 

Takes a Fling at Heredity 



MARGARET 
dear: 

You asked a question in your 
last letter which stands out from the 
body of the epistle like a rag on a sore 
thumb. You ask me if I don't think that 
men are streaky. 

To answer you categorically, no, my 
dear child, I don't think that men are 
streaky. If you'll remodel your ques- 
tion,^ and ask me if I don't think the 
deportment of the entire human race 
is an uneven performance, I'll gladly 

65 



You ask if men 
are streaky 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



agree with you; but if you confine your 
stringencies to a single department, I'm 
out for an argument. Lest you should 
find something lacking or evasive about 
my direct answer, I'm perfectly willing 
to spend a few minutes in going into the 
merits of the case. 

Let us assume, then, that your question 
was prompted by the, to you, unexpected 
behavior of some specially selected young 
gentleman. We'll say that you knew 
him well and favorably as one of the 
leading Christian Endeavorers of your 
neighborhood, and had been led to believe 
him a pillar of propriety. All 
of a sudden you become pos- 
sessed of facts which would 
indicate that there were times 
when his behavior was far, 
far otherwise. You 
may have discov- 
ered him working 




If 9 a ease of 

another good 

man g o n0 

wrong 



on an old boat down on the beach, 
in overalls and undershirt, and 
cheering his loneliness with tobac- 
co — which he appeared to be eat- 
ing instead of smoking. Or, still 
darker thought, you may have 
come upon him unexpectedly, just 
after he had welted his thumb with 
a machinist's hammer, and caught him 
in the act of using language ill assorted 
for publication. 

It may even have been drink, or the 
female of his species that led to his un- 
doing. 

To reduce it to the simplest terms, he 
did what you didn't expect him to do, and 
you, so to speak, caught him with the 
goods on. 

Whatever it was, it's a case of another 
good man gone wrong. He is now defi- 
nitely beyond the pale, and you turn 
naturally to moralizing and to me. 

57 



A pillar 
of 'prO" 
priety 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



Now you are wondering, since so 
shining an example could go so far wrong, 
if there is any man, anywhere on the 
face of the footstool, that may be frankly 
trusted. 

Will you let that go for a general 
hypothesis? If so, I'll agree to tackle 
the problem with you, and tell you frank- 
ly just what's in my mind, with no reser- 
vations. 

I think that men and women alike are 
merely savages with a very thin veneer of 
civilization — children just a few steps 
away from the darkness from which we 
have come, groping with dazed eyes for a 
better light, and very often, with the best 
intentions in the world, stumbling and 
falling. I mean this to apply to your 
sex just as well as mine; I don't think 
you women are one bit better than we 
men are, or for that matter, worse either. 
You differ slightly in some directions, the 

58 



TAKES A FLING AT HEREDITY 



differentiation often charmingly in your 
favor. But as human animals, my feel- 
ing is that we all weigh in at about the 
same. 

As, for instance, somebody said once 
that, *'The lovely young thing who will 
swing on your neck at eighteen, and recite 
in impassioned periods that she'll die if 
you leave her, is quite apt to go on the 
stage just as your youngest children are 
getting out of high school." It hasn't 
happened to me yet, but I would be in- 
clined to believe it. 

I'm not inveighing 
against her, you under- 
stand. That's just the way 
her streak asserted itself. 
She didn't care for tobacco; 
and profanity brought her 
no sense of elation. She was 
not trained to try to rob her 
fellow man, and she found 

59 



Often 
char m- 

ingly in 
your fa- 
vor 




UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



no solace in strong waters. So, judged 
by purely masculine standards, she looks 
as though her deportment were one 
hundred percent. ; but, believe me, she's 
a savage child, even as you and !• 

You know that back of us there are 
centuries of habit and training, even if 
you happen at this moment to be study- 
ing a text-book written by an eminent 
scientist who doesn't believe in heredity. 
The Children of Israel say there are six 
thousand years of history; Mr. Darwin 
surmises that perhaps six million would 
be a closer guess. 

At any rate, since our first old savage 
ancestor rose up in his might, magnificent, 

and chose his hind 

legs as a means of 

Km^s^^ locomotion, and beat 

Beat domesticity ^8fS i • • • . • • i • 

into his wife ^P>>v domcsticity mto his 

wife with a club, 
what have they all 

60 




TAKES A FLING AT HEREDITY 



been doing? What habits have we, in 
this generation, gathered from them, 
even if we don't inherit by direct descent ? 

You've seen a dog turn three times on a 
short-napped rug in front of the fire? 
And you know that it's because his great- 
great-G-father was a wolf who slept in 
the open, amid tangled brush and matted 
grass, and used his own long fur and tail 
as a whisk-broom to brush himself out a 
neat bed, with a comfortable mattress 
to lie on. And so the dog, today, with- 
out apparent reason, goes through the 
same motions before lying down. 

How many unconscious, or subcon- 
scious, wild habits do you suppose crop 
through our surface veneer, and seem to 
give our lives the lie ? 

Take the only authentic history of the 
race we've got. I'm referring to the 
Bible now, and I assume you'll stand 
by me. Kindly regard the first family 

61 




A high-line ex- 
ample 



scheduled: four persons, Adam, 
Eve, Cain and Abel. One of 
them a murderer! 

If the family traits are trans- 
mitted, that entitles you and me 
to have twenty-five per cent, of 
murder in our dispositions right at the 
jump. That's some considerable handi- 
cap to start us with, don't you think? 

A few hundred years go by, and the 
Adamses get to acting so plumb unrea- 
sonable that the Good Lord can't stand 
for it, and He decides to extirpate them, 
saving only the pious Noah and his im- 
mediate kin, together with certain speci- 
fied pairs of quadrupeds. 
What happens? 

The Noahs, under heavenly guidance, 
embark on a long sea voyage, and im- 
mediately on casting anchor, Mr. Noah 
lands and plants a vineyard and, as soon 
as he can arrive at satisfactory results, 



62 



TAKES A FLING AT HEREDITY 



proceeds to get most gorgeously in- 
ebriated, thereby setting a high-line ex- 
ample for all good sailors from his day to 
now to get "pie-eyed'" the second they 
come ashore from anywhere. 

Well, there were only eight in that 
family. So, in addition to the twenty- 
five per c^nt. strain of murder, we should 
get one-eighth of drunkenness. So here's 
three-eighths of your amiable disposition 
and mine accounted for before we get a 
guess as to how we would like to behave 
if the matter were left to us. 

And, on top of that, youVe always got 
to consider that it's a long way back to 
Noah, and figure some of 
the several folks who hap- 
pened in between. 

Do you remember calling 
my attention once in a gal- 
lery to the portrait of a 
Revolutionary forbear in 

63 




A Revolutionary 
forbear 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



regimentals, and how we conceded with- 
out debate that he had a brandy-and- 
water complexion and an ultra-calculating 
eye? He's sure recent enough so that he 
could quite readily have affected my 
destiny or yours in case you object to my 
tracing some of my streaks 'way back to 
Noah. 

What might I inherit from that sterling 
old patriot? Certainly you'd expect a 
trace of the connoisseur when it came to 
high wines. The jowl and chin would 
hint of a streak in the family which at 
times would crop out in some form of 
high-handed oppression; and the size of 
his collar band suggested a strain of 
apoplexy and high blood-pressure. His 
disposition, I should say, w^as slightly 
choleric. Do you suppose he handed it 
on to me as a sacred trust ? 

Your blessed aunt has at times ob- 
served dispassionately that I have the 

64 




temper of a fiend, and the 
social disposition of an 
Apache; and she meant no 
harm by it at that, for I 
honestly think she's fond of 
me. That's merely some 
of my streakiness, because 
I do pose as a pleasant- 
tempered man. 

On the other hand, I suspect your aunt 
is a coward, although she has a grand 
mind, and I'll admit frankly that she can 
lick me. That's one of her streaks. She 
was born to be a major-general, directing 
wars from a safe distance. She's not so 
good at what's called ''in fighting," but 
fate has been unfair to her. One of her 
ancestors is said to have traded on the 
Spanish Main, under the sign of the 
skull and cross-bones, with eminent 
success. And there are times when I 
have my misgivings about that, too — 



One oj 

her 

ancestors 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



I think she's got some of his streaks. 

I should say, to give you the best of 
which I'm capable, that in judging our 
sex there are a few important funda- 
mentals to look for. If I were of your 
persuasion, and were personally looking 
the young gentlemen over, with perhaps 
some dim idea of acquiring a desirable 
specimen in case I found one, I'd put 
truth first. 

I wouldn't care a rap what his little 
habits were, as long as he stood by his 
guns and defended them. I wouldn't 
care an awful lot what his manners were 
so long as he personally knew that they 
were bad, and showed occasional re- 
deeming glimpses of a realization of 
better things. 

And after truth, I think I'd put cour- 
age. Not the mere physical hardihood 
that perhaps even delights to take a 
chance, but the cool mental courage that 

66 



TAKES A FLING AT HEREDITY 



will take a man where he both loathes and 
fears to go, because of some dominating 
sense of right that is sufficiently com- 
pelling. 

And third — though I don't think it by 
any means third in importance — I'd put 
a certain pleasing human chemistry, 
something that is beyond mere physical 
beauty or surface attractiveness; the 
quality by which certain people's hands 
are always the right temperature, if they 
should happen to touch you inadvertent- 
ly; the quality that you rather like to lean 
against if you are very tired, and it's 
entirely proper that you should do so. 
Because nobody's any good that hasn't 
got these last qualities — that is, any good 
for you. The divorce courts are full of a 
crowded grist of people who married each 
other for their beautiful faces, and are 
now busy telling the judge what fiends 
in human form they got sawed off on them. 

67 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



I heard a mighty bright woman say- 
that most clever women married poor 
men because they could make them 
laugh. It's fine to laugh a reasonable 
amount of time; people who grow old with 
little laughing wrinkles round the corners 
of their eyes are nice people usually. 
But, on the other side of the equation, 
there are some good souls you can have 
more fun being sad with, than you can 
associating with the funniest comic sup- 
plement that was ever published. 

There's one more quality that I want 
to append to my list of desirables. It 
may not even be the whole of a quality 
at all — perhaps it's nothing more than a 
tendency. But, personally, I like men, 
and women too, who are rather extra 
kind to those they don't have to be kind 
to — the little folk, the weak ones and the 
poor ones. And when you can find 

68 




somebody 
who prefers to 
be kind, but 
who will go 
gaily out to 
war with the 
biggest prop- 
osition they ever saw, entirely oblivious 
to the size of their opponent, you have 
got somebody that has some nice quali- 
ties. Because it's a fine and rare trait in 
human nature to be devoid of both 
servility and tyranny. 

Lots of people, after a short surface 
study of the human race, rise up joyously 
and write fat books proving that the said 
race makes no progress and is headed 
nowhere. I haven't got a lot of 
sympathy for such endeavors. To me 
the movement of a race must neces- 
sarily be so slow that nothing but the 
special facilities of a scientific observer 

69 



The Vestal 
Virgins 
liked it. 

They came 
and brought 
their lunch. 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



could possibly hope to record it. 

You know what a glacier looks like — 
youVe been among them, and you know 
it's only recently that anybody had any 
idea at all that glaciers marched. Here 
before the eye palpably is a vast, im- 
movable mountain. Some of it melts a 
little in the sun on hot days; but you go 
back to it again and again during your 
whole lifetime, and it's always just as 
you first found it — that is, if you're the 
ordinary observer. 

But the scientist goes and arranges a 
delicate little set of instruments for 
measuring, in which the microscope and 
micrometer screw play important parts. 
And he protects them against a change of 
weather, and leaves them there for a 
year. And when he comes back and 
reads the record, he says, **Yes, it moves; 
in a hundred and ten years it will be 
overboard. It's going down thirty 

70 



TAKES A FLING AT HEREDITY 



miles to the sea/' And the man's right. 

To adjust the micrometer screw and 
the microscope to the movement of the 
human race — 

You know that two thousand years ago, 
in Rome, you could advertise the fact 
that you were going to butcher a hundred 
Christians in the arena of the Colosseum. 
Margaret dear, the world has come up so 
far that you, with your birth and training, 
in spite of all your courage, couldn't sit 
out that gruesome sight. But the Vestal 
Virgins could — they liked it — they came 
and brought their lunch. 

That was only a short two thousand 
years ago, and today, if you catch me 
going to see a little discreet boxing be- 
tween two perfectly healthy persons, who 
emerge therefrom without a scratch, you 
regard me as a low, beetle-browed bully, 
you disqualify me as a gentleman, and 
ask yourself despairingly, ^'What is the 

71 



UNCLE bill's letters 



world coming to?" The answer is: It 
isn't coming to anything — it's going 
away from it! 

So, to come back to the scratch-line 
from which you started me: No, Mar- 
garet dear, indignantly I deny it. We 
men are not streaky, we're simply human, 
that's all. 

Affectionately 

YOUR UNCLE 



72 



Chapter V 

Touches Up a Few Complexions 

DEAR 
LITTLE girl: 

In your letter before the last — 
the one I didn't answer — you mentioned 
blithely in passing that you had just 
been trying on a senior's cap and gown; 
and although I wouldn't accuse you 
directly of pinning verbal bouquets upon 
yourself, I somehow was led to infer that 
you deemed the effect vastly becoming. 

Far be it from me to undermine 
your character with adulation, 
but I am confident that in that rig 

73 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



you would be something to look at. 

But here, just as imagination has taken 
me by the hand and beckoned me to come 
a-Maying, my avuncular duty knocks on 
the door of my mind with three sullen 
thumps. "Remember," says the A. D. 
in a sinister voice, "you are not to go 
turning that child's head with blandish- 
ments about what an extremely easy 
looker she is liable to grow up to be. Be 
j&rm with her; pull out the vox humana 
stop as far as it will go, and ^RoUo' at her 
until she is reduced to tears.'' 

Did the suspicion ever cross your 
thoughtless mind of how many ladies 
there are in this vale of tears who look 
extremely well in fixings to which they 
are in no way entitled.'^ I am not in- 
veighing against your sex as a whole, but 
simply indulging in passing comment on a 
small but none the less well-advertised 
minority whom I seem fated to pass in 

74 



Complexions such os never 
were on land or sea 




'iisr 



my daily walks. 

Complex- 
ions are what I 
have been noticing most of late — com- 
plexions such as never were on land or 
sea. I suppose it is none of my business 
— a lady should have a right to put any- 
thing she can legitimately acquire on her 
face, the face in question being her in- 
herited and inalienable possession which 
no one can give or take away. 

But when you walk past two solid 
miles of them on a populous street, or 
meet maybe three thousand of them on a 
sunny afternoon, and they have almost 
all done something to their faces which 
leaves you in grave doubt as to the in- 
herent humanity of the faces with which 
they started, it has a tendency to fill a 
common human being, one who has been 
brought up to take his faces au naturely 
with an abiding gloom. 

75 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



From stray fragments of conversation, 
by chance overheard, I have gathered the 
vague idea that there are quite a large 
number of ladies who seem to be made up 
of goods that will not bear washing. 

My facts may be foggy, but in some 
way I have gained the impression that 
soap and water does something to their 
faces — congests them, or coagulates them, 
or aggravates or upbraids them — some- 
thing, anyway, that no lady of refine- 
ment would ever care to have done to her 
face. 

Don't misunderstand me to the extent 
of inferring that personally I prefer goods 
guaranteed to be fast. I may be flying 
in the face of revealed religion, as ex- 
pounded to me as a child, 
in even hinting of any such 
thing. Because I seem to 
recall nothing in the in- 
struction imbibed in Sab- 

76 




Goods that will 
not bear washing 



TOUCHES UP A FEW COMPLEXIONS 

bath-school which referred in any way to 
soap as a cleansing agent; and there are 
certainly copious references to full-dress 
occasions where, if I have the phrase 
correctly, the participants, being all 
togged out j5t to kill, topped their toilet 
with a liberal application of '^oil to cause 
the face to shine/' 

It may be irreligious — it may even be 
unhygienic — but personally it doesn't 
sound right to me. I don't think I 
should have liked it if I had lived back in 
Old Testament days, and I don't seem 
any more drawn to it now, although I 
know that some of the things smell 
heavenly, and come in perfectly gorgeous 
cut-glass jugs. And most of them, I 
presume, are put up at a price distinctly 
suggesting gold, frankincense and myrrh. 

Such oils and unguents in the hands of a 
properly qualified adult may be, and 
doubtless are, an excellent thing to assist 

77 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



Nature when she falls down on her job; 
but to place them in the hands of the 
youthful and uninformed seems to me 
about as perspicacious as trying to amuse 
the baby with the ink or the acid bottle- 
When you pass a little tad of grammar- 
school age, and she is calcimined to such 
a degree that you cannot tell whether she 
was originally covered with burlap or 
linoleum, and you mistrust from her 
general contour that she is something 
short of fifteen, it gives you a jolt. A 
procession of them, if you view the world 
through elderly and partially discrim- 
inating eyes, gives you an impulse to fall 
plump into the arms of the first unwhite- 
washed person you meet, and flatly, as 
the great dramatist said, '^sit upon the 
ground and tell sad stories of the death 
of kings." 

Of course, most of the poor little things 
don't mean any harm by it; inside they 

78 




arms 



are probably just as good as 
gold. But if that is so, why 
should they wish to advertise 
something entirely different? 
Why on earth should they desire to ap- f^j^ 
pear on the street with their faces just into^he 
one gorgeous smear? Lip-stick, eye- 
lash marker, rouge and concrete enamel 
slathered on, until one is confident that if 
a chunk of it should flake off, one would 
hear it bump on the sidewalk. 

And what are their mothers thinking 
of to send them out looking like that? 
They, at least, are old enough to know 
better. Any lady old enough to be a 
mother of any kind has got a right to 
know this — that while a facemask made 
of paint may do something to conceal the 
ulterior designs of a lady uncertain about 
her moods and tenses, it never yet has 
been known to attract favorable com- 
ment to a nice girl. 

79 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



After you have seen a few squads of 
these overdecorated feminines march by, 
you are seized with an overwhelming 
desire to fix them up just a Kttle bit 
more. You are incHned to share the 
feehngs of a care-worn but punctihous 
housekeeper, who owns a small white, 
woolly, pink-nosed dog, and discovers 
just before she is about to give a party 
that Fido, with his pink ribbon, has been 
nesting in the garbage-can again. It 
is enough to make any warm-hearted 
impulsive soul want to take these poor 
little paint-layers by the scruff of their 
necks, just as you would Fido, and hold 
their little white-enameled noses over a 
tub of tepid soap-suds, and scrub 'em, 
and scrub 'em, and scrub 'em, till they 
are too weak to cast a shadow. 
It is the kiddies, who buy it by 
the quart, and use it for a 
disguise, who make 
80 




Too weak to 
east a shadow 



TOUCHES UP A FEW COMPLEXIONS 

the stuff hateful. Any mature lady, 
whose soul cannot express itself without a 
delicate touch of maiden's bloom, should 
be entitled to honorable satisfaction. 
But on the indurated cheek of experience 
it has its hazards. Let the lady overstay 
her time by but a single year, and what 
she gets instead of admiration is derision, 
if not worse. 

Not long ago I heard of an honest, 
kindly old captain of industry who came 
to town to borrow a few odd millions, 
and brought his equally honest and kindly 
old wife. She was habituated to a liberal 
use of oils, paints, varnishes, and so forth 
to protect the shrinking delicacy of her 
epidermis. She knew no better. Poor 
thing ! She thought they made her pretty. 

He left her at a hotel and went down- 
town to interview an unctuous and 
respectable old Shylock for the funds. 
His talk was eminently satisfactory. 

81 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



Business rolled along on rubber tires- 
He was told to call next morning and sign 
up for the cash. 

That afternoon he took his wife driving 
in an open carriage. Shylock saw the 
pair, and his soul was pained beyond 
measure that a reputable man, to whom 
he had nearly loaned three millions of 
dollars, should venture forth by daylight 
in company such as she was painted to 
look like. 

The next a. m. he broke it to the cap- 
tain. No loan! No, sir; not to any man 
so brazen as to travel the streets with 
women like that! 

That's the verdict that excessive paint 
will always exact from all but the most 
charitable souls — ''a woman like that.'* 
That's what these poor little immature 
fledglings, with their empty heads, are 
playing up for — to have a world of 
strangers, whom they think they are 

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TOUCHES UP A FEW COMPLEXIONS 

fascinating, pass, and in passing callously 
characterize them as * 'women like that." 

Of course, none of this is aimed at you. 
It is simply an abstract dissertation on 
the horrors attendant on life in a large 
city; the horrors in question having 
shown a tendency to become greatly 
accentuated along about Easter Sundays 
of the years 1915-16-17. 

As far as you are concerned I have no 
misgivings. I am confident that if your 
face is not the right color as God made it, 
you are of sturdy enough fiber to go 
through life imperturbably, without wast- 
ing any time in an effort to match up any 
of your features with what the specialists 
say is the prevailing and fashionable 
shade. And my spirit is peaceful in the 
thought that it would be humanly im- 
possible for you to do the amount of 
exercise and gymnastic work you are 
doing if you had to depend on a slush- 

8S 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



bucket for the necessary replenishments. 

I suppose that men, in spite of their 
boasted claims, are at heart an illogical 
bunch, because even as I write I am 
conscious that there have been times 
when, personally, I honestly admired a 
made-up eye. Earlier in life I am not 
dead sure that there was not at least once 
when I adored one. 

But, just as you may assume that there 
is not one man in a million who has the 
capacity to paint a good picture, so it is 
almost equally safe to assert that not one 
girl in a million is dowered by Heaven 
with a natural talent for making up; and 
most young women would be spared 
some shocking exhibits if they realized 
that every time they operated on their 
eye they were liable to impart an expres- 
sion to it that few would dare to live with. 

None of the foregoing diatribe, my 
dear niece, is to be taken as applying to 

84 




Once whea 
I adored one 




His swal- 
low-tail 



TOUCHES UP A FEW COMPLEXIONS 

the harmless and necessary powder. ^^* 
Any lady, if she has been unduly 
agitated — bitten by a rattlesnake, 
or sunstruck — ^has, in case of last 
resort, the right to a reasonable 
amount of rice-powder. 

But I leave it to you. You 
wouldn't like it yourself, now, would you, 
caked on the exposed surfaces of your hopelessly 

ji 1 l^ 1 •! discolor ed 

most loved menfolks, where you might 
lavish a thoughtless kiss? So a due 
amount of conservatism lends an air of 
refinement even here. Many an ardent 
young man has got his first realization of 
the stern realities of life when he found on 
getting home that the satin facing of his 
swallow-tail was hopelessly discolored 
where the chalky arms of his inamorata 
had indelibly registered affection. 

Where did all this vituperation begin? 
Something you hinted, I think about 
looking so surpassingly smooth in habili- 

85 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



ments which did not belong to you. 

Half the feminine trouble in this world 
starts with the innocent but soon-to-be- 
troubled one suddenly getting a picture 
of how particularly gorgeous she would 
look plus something to which she has no 
hereditary or honest title. Many of 
these aids to perfect appearance are kept, 
as I have delicately suggested, in drug- 
gists' jars. Others repose in the show- 
cases of swagger jewelers, and some, I 
believe, are still running round in a state 
of nature, keeping their present owners, 
the skunks and the minks, warm and dry. 

Femininely speaking, it is fine to have 
fluffy hair. I know ladies who pay three 
dollars on Monday to have something 
put on theirs, and one dollar on Tuesday 
to have it taken off again ; alternating thus 
through their busy week, and facing on 
Saturday night a deficit of nine dollars 
for having it put on, and three dollars for 

86 



TOUCHES UP A FEW COMPLEXIONS 

having it taken off. They say that 
nothing else produces the same effect — 
except having good hair. I have been 
hounded by a sneaking suspicion that 
what goes on is a well-known mange cure, 
and that what takes it off is a soap equally 
good for shaving or use in the laundry. 
But when you hear the ladies themselves 
mention it, it sounds like a ritual from 
some mystic shrine. 

Dropping nonsense for the moment, and 
getting right down to the sub-cellar of 
facts, it is a heap better, little girl, to be 
something, and do something, than it is 
to look something. It is a finer thing to 
win a place in people's hearts and hold it, 
than it is to keep even an advanced 
position in the sidewalk throng, whose 
iridescent complexions cause the by- 
stander to gasp! 

It is a happier thing for the girFs own 
self — and I won't even add the stock 

87 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



phrase ''in the long run/' It is a happier 
thing right now, this minute, to have a 
merry and honest soul looking out of 
fearless eyes, than it is to view the world 
about you through the eyes of sad dis- 
illusionment, no matter if they be made 
up with something that costs much more 
than radium. 

A ND my best word to you — still going 
jLjL back to the cap and gown — is to 
endeavor not to allow your mind to be 
diverted too much by ornaments and 
side-arms and epaulets, which represent 
the diflferent degrees of ability or pul- 
chritude in this wicked world, but to 
study the things for which they stand. 

And having made up your mind as to 
the worthwhileness of the thing itself, go 
after it, and God speed you. If then, 
after you have acquired the solid sub- 
stance, vou discover to your surprise that 

88 



TOUCHES TIP A FEW COMPLEXIONS 

its adornments and hereditaments be- 
come your style of beauty, hurrah for 
you! — you are a lucky girl. 

Look at the back side of the tapestry 
for a moment. Go out in the park some 
day and watch the procession of elegant 
equipages, each with two men in uniform, 
and each bearing in haughty splendor on 
its back seat an overfed and bejeweled 
lady, and an over-fed and dyspeptic Pom. 
Art can do no more for either. They rep- 
resent the last word in color and cut. 
But where are the hosts of admirers? If 
you leave out the two on the front seat, 
who are paid to be there, the answer 
continues somewhat aimlessly to be, 
'^ Where?" 

Do not dwell overlong on this scene of 
desolate grandeur, but come back again to 
the girl or woman who has something of 
wholesome service to offer everyone she 
meets, and who, no matter whether she 

89 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



started life looking like a magazine cover 
or not, is of a neatness, and cleanliness, 
and sweetness, that makes everybody's 
heart go out unconsciously to meet her 
half-way. 

The girl who, instead of plastering 
coloring matter on the outside of her 
eyes, has been cultivating the soul and 
personality behind them; who gets her 
color from out-of-doors, and her grace 
from health and exercise; who puts the 
real stuff inside instead of false stuff out- 
side — is young at any age. I wouldn't 
even bar Mrs. Methuselah if she was that 
kind of a person. 

I think I had better stop while the 
stopping is good; otherwise I am liable 
to lie under the imputation of taking too 
much time from your really important 
studies. 

To get back once more to the sordid 
practicalities of life, what kind of a senior 

00 



TOUCHES UP A FEW COMPLEXIONS 

do you aim to be when you get that cap 
and gown ? Just simply a becoming one, 
or one of those grave creatures full of 
hauteur and erudition? Or will you 
make a nice blend of all the qualities, and 
be becoming at times, and both wise and 
merry at all times ? 

I don't suppose I could like you any 
more than I do now, but when I con- 
template the prospect, I am afraid that 
I am going to. 

YOUR PLAIN UNCLE 




Ladies who pay three 
dollars on Monday 

91 




Distracting Attention 



Chapter VI 

Uncle Bill Loses His "Goat" 



M 



Y DEAR 
LITTLE woman: 



I managed to extract much joy 
out of your last letter. Particularly was 
I struck with your surmise that the cerise 
silk stockings might distract the attention 
of the observer from contemplating the 
brilliancy of your intellect. 

Danger of that sort may lurk, but as 
the gown which your aunt conferred 
upon you is white and, as I remember, 
has a reserve touch of the self -same color, 
I think that if I were you I would risk a 
chance on having my intellect regarded 
temporarily with inadvertence. 

I am rather pleased with myself for 
giving you this advice for I think that 
your query was made much in the mood 

93 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



of a voter who canvasses before election 
to find out who is going to win before he 
votes, and is correspondingly gratified 
when he has guessed right after he has 
cast his vote. 

I believe my advice in regard to the 
hosiery is inherently sound but I am 
strongly of the opinion that nothing will 
separate you from said cerise socks short 
of a sheriff's posse or a search warrant- I 
have no idea that you would consent to be 
parted from them without due process of 
law. 

Mention of the casual voter and his 
fatuous desire to join the majority re- 
minds me that I esteem it my avuncular 
duty to tarry by the wayside and be a 
trifle cross with you. 

Your last letter contained one item 
which on mature reflection I find indi- 
gestible. I am referring to what you 
told me about the "nice new girls" you 



tTNCLE BILL LOSES HIS GOAT 



had just made friends with. I don't 
recall whether you spoke of them as 
belonging to the ^'better classes'' or 
whether you distinctly designated them as 
"swell/' but I received both impressions. 

It was a remark you quoted from one 
or more of them that stuck in my crop. 
Something to the effect that in her (or 
their) opinion "Our very nicest people 
didn't go in strong for Woman's Suf- 
frage." 

Your sub-deb may have been right 
according to her lights, but, even if so, 
it gets her nowhere. There have been 
times in national history when our self- 
elected "nicest people," in the face of a 
new movement, have shown a marked 
backwardness in coming forward, and 
quite a number of momentous events 
have been ushered in by people whose 
names did not occur in the blue book at all. 

In fact, the spirit of genius not in- 

95 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



frequently works that way. The old 
masters weren't "old masters'* at all 
when they were young chaps rustUng 
pot-boilers for their bread and butter. 
Generations after their death elapsed 
before the world really woke up to the 
importance of their work. 

I seem to remember dimly seeing a 
statement somewhere that one of the 
Adamses practically queered the Ameri- 
can Revolution with a large number of 
ultra respectable society folk of his time. 
I faintly recall that one of the Colonial 
400 even went so far as to refer to him 
flippantly as a pothouse politician. But 
you've only got to be a nineteenth cousin 
of one of his most obscure progeny to 
pretty near qualify for being a Colonial 
Dame today. 

And John Brown, who was not only 
instrumental in getting the first shot fired 
in our great war for freedom, and who 

96 



UNCLE BILL LOSES HIS GOAT 



perished in a misguided attempt to 
"double in brass" and receipt for the 
same shot, was a person of no social 
standing whatever. And yet, it is need- 
less to remind you, that today the social 
pets of John Brown's time are perma- 
nently planted under mausoleums heavy 
enough to hold them in everlasting peace 
while the turbulent soul of John Brown, 
as frequently stated, still goes marching 
on. 

I can't seem to remember that I ever 
haggled with you very much about * Votes 
for women.'' In fact, I believed you to 
be a person of such sense as to obviate 
the need. Besides I, personally, feel no 
burden of responsibility for Woman's 
Suffrage. 

I didn't bring it here. There is no 
reason why it should mean anything 
particular in my young life. I have all 
the votes I need now and a perfectly good 

97 



Uncle bill's letters 



wife who can out-vote me two to one 
under existing laws. 

Why should I clamor to extend her 
powers ? 

And yet there was something the least 
bit snippy about your lady friend's 
remark, something that reminded one of 
the old high handshake that used to be 
so inordinately popular. 

Your memory may not go back to it 
but I recall a number of social occasions 
on which, in the attempt to greet a polite 
stranger, I discovered to my chagrin that 
I appeared to be flapping one hand around 
in the sub-cellar while my vis-a-vis was 
waving da-da to me from the mansard 
roof. 

I suppose it was unreasonable to take 
umbrage but I never failed to become 
secretly incensed, and I find myself 
enjoying the same mental disturbance 
over a visualization of your society friend 

98 



UNCLE BILL LOSES HIS "GOAT" 



who, probably, is ''going on 18" in her act 
of instructing you as to what our *'best 
people'' are doing. And the fact that 
she attached her easy lessons in etiquette 
to a human problem as weighty as Equal 
Suffrage impels me to orate at you after a 
somewhat acrimonious fashion. 

You will therefore please pardon any 
indication that my bearings are getting 
hot and assume, as I feel sure you will, 
that if anything sounds at all ill-tempered 
it is meant for the lady who took it upon 
herself to mold your shy young character. 

:tt sie :^ 

To begin at the very beginning of the 
somewhat ponderous problem which your 
young friend so blithely disposed of with 
a would-be axiom, a government is said 
to derive its just powers from the consent 
of the governed. To you, who are 
rapidly getting to be a highly educated 
and sophisticated lady, it is superfluous 

99 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



to mention where and by whom this was 
said. From looking over your school 
schedules I feel justified in assuming that 
you are also getting to be somewhat of a 
logician. I therefore ask you — 

Have you any objection which you 
wish to voice at this point to that senti- 
ment.? You have not.^^ Very good! 

Having thus skilfully lured your child- 
ish footsteps on to ground which an 
anti-suffragist would do well in self- 
preservation to avoid, I am moved to 
propound this query. 

Are women a part of the governed.'^ 
That is, do you acknowledge them to be 
subject to the laws under which they live ? 

In order not to make this sound too 
much like an examination, or to tax your 
intellect too far, I will frankly say that the 
answer to this question is 

"Yes." 

Especially if the sheriff is speedy 

100 



UNCLE BILL LOSES HIS GOAT 



enough to catch them, and they do not 
happen to be too good-looking when it 
comes to facing the jury. 

Our forefathers, as you doubtless re- 
call, met in Philadelphia at the front end 
of the disturbance with the mother 
country and formulated a very good 
Constitution which became the basis of 
all our laws. So far as I can remember, 
women were not noticeably consulted. 
Of course a forefather or two may have 
gone home at night and asked his wife 
how he'd better vote the next day. But 
if so, the fact did not creep into history, I 
believe. If I am wrong in this, you, be- 
ing nearer to history than I , may correct me . 

Our forefathers spoke from time to 
time about "the people'' and demanded 
quite an extensive bill of rights for them. 

Would you care to start an argument 
at this time as to whether women are 
people or not? 

101 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



I am willing to take the affirmative, if 
you wish the other end of the debate, in 
spite of the fact that in the Orient it is 
assumed that they are not, and as the 
Orient is a large place — perhaps one-half 
the population of the world today — might 
on a referendum decide that the women 
have no souls. 

I am even liberal enough to admit, if 
pressed, that possibly the little friend 
who advised you on the subject of suf- 
frage might have been born minus a 
soul. Or, if she has one, perhaps has not 
had time to get it in good working order 
as yet. But I think that if you use your 
brains instead of your superstitions and 
your prejudices you will be willing to 
admit that in almost everything, except 
perhaps voting, women show a marked 
resemblance to people. And as it was 
for "the people'' that our forefathers 
ostensibly conducted their lucubrations 

102 



it sounds only fair that women should be 
entitled to a wee small voice. 

Of course I recognize that at this 
juncture some weazened little feminine 
party is liable to arise in our midst and 
protest in an acidulated voice that "Wo- 
men as a class don't want to vote/' 

My dear young relative, just so long as 
any one single woman anywhere is moved 
to voice a decorous and modest interest 
in the conditions of her own legal servi- 
tude, political, economic or domestic, it 
is up to old Father Earth to stop work 
instanter, roll down his shirt-sleeves, put 
on his best bib and tucker and bend a 
reverent ear to what the lady has to say. 

Because a vote is, after all, nothing but 
an opinion. You make a cross on a piece 
of paper, merely indicating that you think 
thus and so. It's not an arduous task. 
Usually it doesn't take long. Although 
there have been times when the ballots 

103 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



were so big that one could not unfold 
them in the legal sized voting booth. 

But that is no reflection on your sex, 
Heaven knows! but is due solely to the 
fact that some misguided and superior 
male in his attempt to concentrate his 
massive intellectual processes scattered 
his typography all over a 10-acre lot. 
Sometimes, of course, if you don't happen 
to agree with everything that professional 
politicians of your neighborhood have 
laid out for you, you may have to make 
more than one cross, but at the worst it is 
not much more complicated than tick- 
tack-to which as you will recall soars to no 
Empyrean heights of intellectuality. 

If a woman has perceptive faculties 
enough to know whether the street in 
front of her house is clean or dirty; 
whether the milk left at her door has its 
reasonable proportion of cream or not; 
whether the State oiBficial who inspects the 

104 



UNCLE BILL LOSES HIS "gOAt" 



scales stands in with the corner grocer 
and helps short- weight her; and if she is 
not too palsied of mentality to make one 
simple X with a soft lead pencil at the 
designated spot on a sheet of paper, the 
chances are excellent that she has brains 
enough to vote. 

Take one simple instance. Your 
mother has a new runabout. Let us 
suppose that the roadway for a mile in 
either direction from her residence, hav- 
ing been badly laid a year ago at huge 
expense, is now full of pitfalls. Your 
mother breaks every spring in her new 
car. Election time comes around. The 
patriotic gentleman who has been prof- 
itably holding the honorable position of 
road superintendent appeals to your 
mother for her suffrage. He is a gala 
person and is going strong up to the point 
where he inadvertently discloses that he 
is the man who built the road and has 

105 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



officially set your parent back the cost of 
a new set of springs. 

By the time your mother has checked 
up in the daily press just how much the 
road in question cost, it's a foregone 
conclusion that some other public char- 
acter will get her suffrage. 

She may vote for a low, funnel-shaped 
person with a frowsy mustache who is as 
bald as a penny wooden doll, but if she 
is at all like the average lady she will go 
to the polls with a string tied round her 
finger, if necessary, to remind her that 
the Hon. Jim Jones owes her one per- 
fectly good set of springs, and she will 
vote for a party who being endowed with 
public money with which to build roads, 
can be trusted to build 'em. 

It's as simple as that! 

One of our greatest modern writers 
said that ''Democracy was only an ex- 

106 



UNCLE BILL LOSES HIS GOAT 



periment/' and claimed that no one had 
a right either to praise or blame as yet, 
because nobody has seen it working. 

Democracy after all is only a theory 
that with the consent of all the governed 
a more equitable and livable government 
results than if a limited number of in- 
dividuals appointed by themselves, at- 
tempt to direct government according 
to their own ideas. And it seems only 
natural that men with democratic minds 
should produce among themselves a gov- 
ernment that they will like better, be it 
bad or good, than anything anybody else 
can impose upon them against their will. 

As I say, most men democratically 
minded feel like that, but what lots of 
them don't recognize yet is that many of 
the women in this country are just near 
enough like men in their intellectual 
processes to feel exactly the same way 
about it. 

107 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



One of the first experiments in our 
modern democracy took place when our 
Puritan folks came over to Massachu- 
setts and built their first log cabins and 
announced that in that village there 
would be freedom to worship God. It 
was weak and feeble and faulty. Their 
views on freedom in connection with the 
veneration of the Deity did not in the 
least hamper them when it came to cut- 
ting off the ears of Quakers, or ducking 
elderly ladies with a penchant for black 
cats and broom sticks- But some of it 
was good and all of it was well intended. 

When later their descendants chucked 
the English breakfast tea into Boston 
harbor and sent George III notice that 
then and thereafter there was no use 
having a collector come 'round, the 
experiment in democracy moved up one 
peg, and that fine old line *'No Taxation 
Without Representation'' was made a 

108 



UNCLE BILL LOSES HIS GOAT 



permanent and integral part of our dialect. 

When in the 60's we fell out with our 
own people and the bickering resulted 
in a cruel and bloody war of years, the 
doctrine was established that there should 
be neither economic nor political slavery 
for any people in the United States, and 
democracy again moved forward. 

But in all these movements woman 
didn't get any advertising. She simply 
clung meekly to the coat-tails of her mate 
and tried to keep up with his pace and 
when he sat down to rest she gratefully 
received such news of the new liberties 
he had acquired, as he was willing to 
impart to her. 

So, while men have been experimenting 
gorgeously with Democracy and have 
won an increasingly larger Freedom, 
women have been for the most part 
compelled to tread a rather lonesome 
intellectual road. 

109 



UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



When equal education was suggested 
for women, the country was scandalized. 
All the predictions which are now work- 
ing overtime to show that if suffrage is 
given to women it will disrupt the home 
and do violence to the State, are said to 
have been worked, to prove what dire 
calamities would result if Mt. Holyoke 
Seminary for young ladies were per- 
mitted to disseminate its soul-shattering 
theories of cookery and Latin grammar. 

The great war which has now been 
going on for three years is obviously a 
world struggle for the further extension 
of Democracy, and our President jus- 
tified his action in declaring that a state 
of war existed, for us, with his now famous 
saying, **The world must be made safe 
for Democracy/' 

While this Titanic struggle has been 
raging, seven of our states have declared 
for the principle of equal suffrage, wholly 

110 



UNCLE BILL LOSES HIS * GOAT 



or in part. Canada, without any pres- 
sure whatever, has given suffrage to her 
women in six provinces. Russia is re- 
ported to have freed her women, and the 
British House of Commons has just 
passed, by a huge majority, a bill giving 
the suffrage to women of thirty and 
over. 

So you see that whether the individual 
is willing to recognize it or not, the great 
governments of the earth are apparently 
becoming converted to the theory that 
political equality for all the citizens 
without regard to sex is a democratic 
necessity. 

This question of equal suffrage is so 
self evidently the next step in Democracy 
and concerning as it does, half the race, 
it has grown so large, that it is almost 
difficult to understand how anyone who 
thinks can oppose it. 

Of course during the Civil War there 
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UNCLE BILL S LETTERS 



were fat and comfortable slaves who 
didn't want to be free. Just as during 
the Revolution there were corpulent and 
prosperous Tories who liked ^^taxation 
without representation'' better than any- 
thing else they could think of. And just 
so today you will run across the plump 
pouter-pigeon of a lady who will plain- 
tively decry any remote suggestion of 
the idea that her fair, fat brain should be 
taxed for an opinion, or that her im- 
mediate legal lord and master from whom 
she draws dividends should be fretted by 
any intimation that she possesses the 
power of thought. 

There's a heap of inertia to be over- 
come. Many women may not be used 
to the idea of voting as yet, and some of 
them undoubtedly are honestly startled 
at the prospect, but in states where 
women do vote, life goes on, I am told, 
along very much the customary lines. 

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UNCLE BILL LOSES HIS GOAT 



People are born, married, have children 
and die. 

They fall in love quite commonly, and 
fall out not infrequently. 

The only difference perhaps is, and I 
am judging from the samples obtainable, 
that the women in equal suffrage states 
have just a shade more civic self respect, 
and as self respect is a soothing sensation, 
I imagine they are gratified by its pos- 
session. 

At any rate, I would have you observe 
that in these turbulent times when people 
change their minds every few moments 
about what they want politically, there 
is no state in which equal suffrage obtains 
where there has been any serious effort 
to get rid of it. 

Life goes on in its well ordered way, 
families remain reasonably cohesive, 
women do not appear to attract any 
greater degree of undue attention to 

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themselves than they did formerly and 
the state itself does not blow up with a 
loud report. 

I want you to think of this thing as a 
big human problem and not simply con- 
cern yourself about the petty question as 
to what you personally would do with the 
vote if you had it. I want you to think 
of it hard, because as the writer already 
quoted observed, ^'Democracy is the 
most splendid adventure that the human 
race has ever attempted." 

If your intellect doesn't emit some good 
honest opinion on this subject within a 
reasonable time, I shall be seriously 
perturbed over the misgiving that per- 
haps after all you are no niece of mine 
but only a witless changeling left in- 
advertently on my doorstep by an an- 
tique and acerbated anti-suffragist. 

:H :is ^ 

On glancing at the above it sounds like 
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unconscionably gloomy stuff to send to a 
cheerful young thing like yourself. I 
catch myself wondering whether all of 
my indignation is due to your introduc- 
tion of the subject of suffrage, or whether 
a great part of it may not be plain, com- 
mon, garden jealousy over the fact that 
someone else has attempted to assume a 
directing hand in your upbringing. 

For as you well know, I have arro- 
gated that complete job to myself and 
am resentful of interference from outside 
parties, society wise or otherwise. 

If I have been too school -teachery, 
forgive me on the ground of my unalloyed 
affection, and forget it. 

But don't forget at your convenience 
to let me know in words of one syllable 
that you are a good, hard-working little 
suffragist. 

Affectionately yours, 

UNCLE BILL. 

lis 



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